The Tree of Bright Lights
by Naty Mu
Summary: [PIP Challenge: Everlark in the Holidays] Peeta is sleeping upstairs, completely exhausted after one of his episodes. Katniss knows she can't erase all the evidence of it, and even though he won't remember, he will know. And she will have to see it again. She will have to see the shame and regret and self-loathing in his blue eyes. But she won't have it. He deserves more.


**The Tree of Bright Lights**

_**Summary**__: _Peeta is sleeping upstairs, completely exhausted after one of his episodes. Katniss knows she can't erase all the evidence of it, and even though he won't remember, he will know. And she will have to see it again. She will have to see the shame and regret and self-loathing in his blue eyes. But she won't have it. He deserves more.

* * *

The wind outside whistles giving the whole scene before her an eerie quality. The snow has been falling mercilessly for days now and it gives Katniss the feeling of being trapped in her own house. Not being able to hunt or even go to town during this time of the year isn't new at all, but today for the first time she is dreading it.

She kneels in the kitchen floor to clean the mess that testifies of the events of the day. The broken plates of what had started as a beautiful dinner between friends now seem like a photograph, forever still, of the atrocities that this world had done to the boy with the bread. Because Peeta was gentle, sweet and caring. He would never hurt her, not on purpose.

Except when having an episode.

It's in these moments of unwanted solitude that she allows herself to think about the sister she's lost. Because Katniss knows that Prim would have known how to help Peeta far better than she does. Right now she thinks as if her presence only brings him closer to the edge of insanity and she wonders why he decided to come back to her over a year ago.

But the truth is that if he hadn't done it, return to her that is, she probably never would have found the strength to pull herself together after losing Prim. And now, even though her nightmares remain, with the dreadful images of dying children, of salvage mutations lurking to kill her, of her sister blown to pieces on that forsaken day, even tough she still wakes up shaking, screaming and with tears rolling down her face, his arms are there. And his voice is there, soothing her with loving words. And his warmth, making her feel safe, like no other person in this world could.

It had taken a while to trust each other again well enough to share a bed, again. The way they had done before, during the Victory Tour and before the Quarter Quell, strictly platonic, chasing the nightmares away together. Always together.

And with the trust came the intimacy of sharing their scars. Her nightmares, her sorrow, her unwillingness to talk and his confusion, his loneliness and his violent episodes, now ripped open for them both to see.

After cleaning the kitchen, she moves to the next room, where the television is still on, talking to the broken chair and table that Peeta, always so strong and powerful, had send flying towards the wall. Plutarch Heavensbee is on the screen now and Katniss grits her teeth. He has his own show, an educational show he had called it, where he shares the parts of ancient history that weren't erased by the previous government and forgotten by time. History that a few privileged citizens of the Capitol had been able to learn even before the war and that now, under the new administration, was going to be shared with all the districts.

She thinks about Peeta while deciding that they will use the wood of the broken furniture for the fire. He's sleeping upstairs, completely exhausted after his episode, just how it usually is. Tomorrow he'll see the missing table and chair, the bags filled with broken glass and porcelain, the tiny bruises on her wrists that he left while trying to hold on to sanity, and even tough he won't remember about this, he will know. And she will have to see it again. She will have to see the shame and regret and self-loathing in his blue eyes.

She hates seeing those feelings written in his face. She hates that he feels guilt over something that he can't control. He tries. She knows he tries to remember what is real and what is not, and he asks her and tries to believe her. But the false memories are still there, lurking in the back of his mind, confusing him, trying to drive him away from her. But Katniss won't allow it.

So in those moments, she looks at him in the eye and wills him to see the sincerity in her own. Because she can't let him go, because Peeta is all she has left. More than that, Peeta is all she needs.

But he deserves so much more than what she can give him, especially now that she is nothing but a broken shell of the girl she used to be. He deserves beauty and color to inspire his art, instead of darkness and solitude. He deserves love to fill his heart, instead of fear and regret.

"They used to put up trees inside their houses," Plutarch says on the TV, annoyingly cheerful. "They would decorate them with beautiful lights and ornaments."

Katniss looks at the screen warily. There's an image, some sort of photograph or drawing, she can't tell, of a pine. And the pine is glowing, glowing with shiny lights and golden figures, and a beautiful innocent child with wings on his back sitting on top of it. Her mouth opens on its own account.

"Apparently it represented eternal love," he adds.

Katniss stands up hastily, her mind set on what she needs to do to erase the sorrow from Peeta's eyes. So she goes outside, axe in hand. It won't be necessary to go as far as the woods, for which she is grateful since she doubts she could make it that far. One of the trees in village will do just fine.

By the time he wakes up, the position of the sun indicates that it's past noon. Also, the acute aching of his muscles and his sore throat are the testimony of an episode that he doesn't remember, as usual. As it tends to be after these episodes, at this time of day Katniss would be about to come home from the woods hauling even more fallen prey than usual, indicating how much his episode had upset her. But the snow covers the trails and disguises the dangers that make it unsafe for her to go out there during this time of the year. So she'll probably be downstairs preparing lunch with the meat that they have stored for this kind of occasions.

He dreads dealing with what he had done the night before, so he takes an extra long shower with the excuse of helping his sore muscles and after he sits a moment in the bed still in his towel looking out the window trying not to think at all.

But nothing could have prepared him for what he'd see when he comes down the stairs. Next to the chimney, between the couches there's a big pine tree where an old ottoman chair used to be. The chair is gone, as the little coffee table usually placed in the middle of the room. Peeta assumes they payed the price for his most recent episode, but it still does not explain why there is a tree occupying the chair's space.

"Katniss?"

He doesn't hear her, nothing out of the ordinary with her stealthy hunter walk, but he rather feels her appear next to him. "How are you feeling?" she asks him, timidly reaching to hold his hand. The feathery touch would have made him speechless not only a year ago, but somehow in the last couple of months they had become bolder with each other, seeking affection without shame. Hugs and hand holding mostly, one or two kisses on the cheek shared clumsily, all within the limits of friendship.

"Fine," he reflects. Usually he would ask her about the episode, try to discover if he hurt her or even tried to, but his mind is pretty much occupied by the pine tree in the room. "Katniss? Why is there a tree inside the house?"

Katniss looks at her feet, while her cheeks get tinted with pink. "I saw it on the television last night. It's an old tradition. From before Panem. They put up a tree inside the house around this time of year and decorated it with figures and lights".

Peeta looks at the tree. It's a six-feet pine tree, probably one of those around the edge of Victor's Village. Suddenly something beyond the surprise of having a tree inside the house strikes him like lightning. "Wait. You chopped down and brought this huge thing inside all by yourself?"

Katniss blushes even more now and nods. Peeta lets out a huff of air while still observing the pine.

"It represents eternal love" she whispers.

To the sound of her words, Peeta rolls in the balls of his feet and stares at her intently. Katniss clears her throat. "I mean... I thought we could decorate it together," she tries to clarify but blushes even more. "For those we lost in the war and the games" she adds.

Peeta nods, still a little stricken by her words. "So, we'll decorate it... With what exactly?" he asks. Katniss smiles a little and shows him a little box she has filled with pinecones, old and broken light bulbs and some of his art supplies. "I don't really have anything to decorate a tree with, but I thought we could make the ornaments ourselves... well, mostly you. I'm not good with paint". Then she smiles a little more and he feels a different kind of warmth that the one coming from the chimney.

So they spend the rest of the day painting—well, he paints—the light bulbs and the pinecones with all the colors he has. He also decides to make some ornaments out of dough that makes Katniss frown endearingly so. "Don't you feel like we're wasting food?" she finally tells him when he pulls the various-shaped cookies out of the oven. "We can eat them after if you want," he proposes. And she tries not to smile at the idea with little success.

By the time the sun starts to set, they have put all their homemade ornaments in the tree. Katniss doesn't seem satisfied though and Peeta notices. "What's wrong? It's not how you imagined it?" Katniss sighs. "The tree had lights. But I can't think of anything to put on it that resembles lights".

Peeta thinks for a moment and then leaves the room only to return with the bag of trash from the events of the day before. Katniss's frown deepens as she sees him pull out the pieces of glass out of the bag. "Careful," she chastises, but Peeta ignores her. "Don't worry. We'll file the edges," he assures her. And after they do it with the same stone she uses to sharpen her knife, he paints them with different colors.

When the paint has dried, he starts placing them between the branches of the tree. Katniss observes him but it's not until he moves away and the light of the fireplace hits the glass that she sees it. The pieces of glass reflect the light of the fire and flicker with their own colors illuminating the room. The reds, blues, greens and yellows dance through the room quietly, bathing their faces at an uneven pace.

She looks at him then and grins at his satisfied expression. "Anything else you find amiss?" he asks.

"There was a child with wings on the top" she answers. His smile widens and they start making the figure out of paper. When it's done and hanging high on the top of the pine, Peeta whispers with a voice different from his own, "It's a mockingjay". Katniss freezes and he shakes his head, as if clearing bad thoughts out of his mind. "Or an angel?" he supplies.

"What is that?" Katniss doesn't think she has heard that word before but she already prefers it to the alternative. The symbol of a war that cost so many lives, the role that haunts her in her sleep, the person that haunts him in the back of his mind.

"A creature people used to believed to exist. A different kind of being with human form, except for the wings on the back, that took care of people, guiding them without their knowledge". At his explanation, Katniss closes her eyes and tries to imagine it. And in her mind the angel has a beautiful face and blonde hair in two braids and a pair of blue eyes. She opens her eyes, willing herself to let go of the image, to painful to endure.

Peeta is watching her now, his eyes shining with that impossible blue shade of his and a soft expression of calmness in his features, bathed in the light of the tree. She doesn't hesitate to embrace him, as she would have years ago. Holding him tight to her small frame, she murmurs in his ear, "Thank you for helping me with the tree".

"Thank you for a beautiful day," he says, his voice cracking a little in the end. Katniss pulls apart just enough to look at his face, to check on him, but when she sees him with his eyes closed and lips only slightly apart she stops thinking. She brings her lips to his without even noticing, as if it's an act that's been done so many times that it becomes natural for the body to make. But when their lips press together they both freeze.

Katniss breaks the embrace quickly, guilt coiling in her chest, silver eyes fixed on the floor, on their shoes. Peeta doesn't say anything or ball his hands into fists, neither his pupils loose their blue shade, both good signs that she misses because of her embarrassment. But she does not fear an episode. She thinks she can handle those, since they're not as serious as they once were, the anger not all directed at her. What she fears is stepping over the imaginary line they both have drawn. What she fears is scaring him away with feelings he does not longer reciprocate, that he may not possibly reciprocate. What she fears is losing him completely.

Peeta is still shell-shocked when she starts to walk away, snapping him out of his mind to cover her in his arms to keep her in place. One of his hands forces her head to face him. He needs to see the look in her eyes, the only indicator of what she really thinks or feels because he knows she won't voice it. And while he expects to find remorse in her bright grey eyes, preparing himself for rejection, he found himself staring at fear and longing.

His chest tightens and his heartbeat speeds up. He can see how Katniss is trying to find the words to apologize, to take back the kiss, but he can't allow it. So he kisses her urgently, like it's the last kiss, the last chance to win her over. And in a way it is. Because he now knows his biggest obstacle was never Gale Hawthorne, it was Katniss Everdeen herself and her fear of love and heartbreak.

Their lips mingle together, relearning the paths they walked many times together for the wrong reasons. Peeta thinks he could burst with happiness when he feels her responding eagerly and clutching his clothes to keep him close. _I love you_, he thinks and let his hands roam her back. And then her lips part and her tongue seeks his. Only one time before they have kissed like this, in a dangerous beach under a pink sky, a memory he would doubt if he hadn't seen on tape while recovering in District 13. The feeling is exhilarating and he hopes it will never stop.

But Katniss pulls away to breath again and they stare at each other with wide eyes. Katniss relishes in the warm arms of Peeta, in their close embrace, in the tug at her lower abdomen and the delicious flavor of his lips that still lingers in hers. _I love you_, she thinks but can't let the words fly out of her mouth.

So she just kisses him again. And again, and again until she thinks she has memorized all the details of his mouth. And then she kisses him some more. She knows she needs him, to see the bright side of this cruel world, to have hope after all the suffering. But now she realizes she also wants him, to hold her, to be with her, to a point she can barely grasp. So she tugs him closer until they fall in the nearest couch willing him to get closer, impossible closer.

"Katniss?" he says breathlessly when he can finally pull away. She feels him smiling against her collarbone, where he is nipping at her sensitive skin. She tries to answer him, she really does, but only short gasps and quiet moans seem to leave her mouth. "You love me. Real or not real?" he whispers.

She smiles and nudges him to look at her. She needs him to see the look on her eyes when she responds.

"Real".

* * *

Author's Note: Hi! This is my first attempt to write in English, which is not my first language, so don't be too hard on me. I decided to try it to participate in the Holiday Challenge of PIP in tumblr. Special thanks to my friend C who helped me with the grammar and orthographic mistakes. And thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it! Happy Holidays!


End file.
